001It is 6:30. We will start this meeting with the pledge. And before we do so, Dr. Kepler. Thank you, Mr. Wright. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for coming. Thank you, Mr. Wright. Thank you, everybody. I appreciate you coming this evening. Today, we're going to do the pledge of allegiance, and that's something that we always use and do before every school board meeting. But tonight, it's going to be just a little bit different. And I'm very excited about that. So, I'm going to turn over saying the pledge of allegiance to Mrs. Birch, who is one of our teachers here at Bailey, and she has a sign language club and some students that she works with in her club doing American sign language. So, we're going to follow Mrs. Birch and her students from the sign language
002club as they say the pledge of allegiance. So, at this point in time, I'm going to turn it over to Mrs. Birch. So, while they We've only Oh, Excuse me. Good morning. Good afternoon. While they're coming up and getting ready for the pledge of allegiance, if the rest of us would stand, please, and face the flag and pledge. Oh, okay. >> I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. To the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for everyone. Good job. Thank you, Mrs. Birch, and thank you, students. That was a great job. You did a nice job, and we're we're proud of you. One more round of applause for them, guys. Yes. So, thank you for leading us in the Pledge of Allegiance
003this evening. And uh Mr. President, I'll turn it back over to you. Uh thank you, sir. I don't believe there was anybody signed up for public comments, and without that, I will turn it right back to you. All right. At this time, I would like to introduce to you the principal here at Bailey Elementary School that wants to give us some information about Bailey Elementary, but also to recognize some of our students here at Bailey School for their accomplishments and the good things that they've done while they are here. So, at this time, I will introduce Mrs. Kim Hayes, principal at Bailey Elementary. Good evening. Thank you. Thank you, board, for being here tonight. Thank you to all of our families and students for coming out tonight. It's awesome. Um as you know, we love
004to shine and share all of the good things that we're doing last year. um Mrs. Havens and I really commented on like academic things that were happening happening in the building along with clubs and different balls and we're going to continue on with the clubs and balls this time. So we have a lot a lot more students that are involved this school year which is super amazing. I've been fortunate or we've both been fortunate really to have staff that's willing to step up and really work with the kids during their own time outside of school hours and show their things that they're proud of and share it with our students. So I'm going to call Mrs. Birch back up to start us off with our American Sign Language Club. Alicia It's been an honor to
005work with these fourth and fifth grade students. They have learned some basic signs and communication signs and I hope it sparked an interest to learn more in the future. Alcaraz Ruth Alcaraz Arthur King Fidel Agreda Zeta Johnson Jared Tenorio. Hayden Cassaday. Anna Lee Chavez. Thank you. Thank you very much. All righty, I want to invite up Ms. Barnes. She led our chat club or game club. Good evening, board and parents. Um this year I've had the distinct privilege of working with the kids for game club. Um the brightest part of it is for me is watching the kids unplug and enjoy community for an hour as we discover with each other games from today and yesteryear. The students have enjoyed making new friends and using new skills that they have acquired. Jalissa Frazier. Fidel Agreda.
006Kendall Price. Jacob Booth. Ariel Welch. Jamal White. Matthew Leblet Hayley Scott Giselle Cervantes One more in class. Arthur King Ava Tigner Naveah Prince Janisa Perez Ruth Alcaraz Sophia Gonzalez You're very gentle. Annalise Chavez Annalise, sorry. Josiah Little And Ava Allenberger Hayden Cassaday Thank you, Ms. Barnes. Thank you, everyone for joining Game Club. Thank you all. All right. So, this was another new new club for us this school year and it's actually almost over. It'll finish up this weekend. I would like to invite Miss Buklavic and Mrs. Krueger. They are coaches for Girls on the Run. So much fun. Um Hello and welcome and thank you for the forward and thank you parents. Um we are the coaches for Girls on the Run. This is the first year at Bailey that we have this and we
007were very lucky to have a full team. Um we are actually hoping to recruit new coaches for next year. Crossing fingers. New teachers. Um the uh program consists of 10 weeks of lessons that include skills like self-confidence, emotional, physical skills leading up to a 5K as Mrs. Hayson mentioned is this Sunday. It's at Valparaiso High School. Um and we also did a community service project where the girls had uh um they had collected food for a food drive for the local food pantry. Uh Ava Zigner Anna Diaz Areli Camarona Aria Alabana Eva Sala Evelyn Here. Emma Embry Giselle Flores Cervantes Here. Chloe Johnson Naomi Jackson Eliana Koltuwik Wait, they're up for that. Kataleya Makola Heidi Todo Caroline Scenario Here. Good job, princess. Thank you so much. Good, I got to embarrass him. If I can
008call out Miss Mary Rose for Spell Bowl. Hi, everyone. I hope your night is going well. It's a beautiful night, in fact. I just want to say I'm doing Spell Bowl. It was a great experience, not only for myself, but the kids were just wonderful. They had to learn 750 words to spell all by themselves. We did plenty of activities, assignments, lots of games. It was a lot for these kids, and I'm really proud of them being able to do that. So, here is this. I have Allison Martinez. Zander Mitchell. Arthur King. Ooh, Arthur. Ava Tegner. Grace Michultka. Jaden Metry. Jace Matthews. Ooh, Jace. Madison Doyle. Ooh, Madison. Matthew Lovelace. Navaeh Prince. Ruth Alferez. Yeah. Ooh, Ruth. Analee Chavez. Ooh, Analee. And that is all of Spellbowl. We almost had enough for two teams this
009year. Let's hope for two next year, right? It's me again. Sorry. Hi, I'm Mary Rose. I'm Mathbowl, also. >> [laughter] >> These kids worked so hard, also. They did a lot of different math equations, word problems, short ones like in math um sorry, in first grade. So, 2 + 2 all the way up to PEMDAS, if anyone remembers that. They did phenomenal. We only had seven, I believe, but they were phenomenal. We did a wonderful job in Math Bowl itself. We have Xander Mitchell again. Ruth Alcaraz. Osvaldo Omar Sanchez. Omar. Matthew Lavalette. Jolisa. Palazzo. Is Jolisa here? Oh. Josiah Little. Hayden Cassiday. Ezequiel Sanchez. Eva Sala. Eva. Caleb Navarez. Oh, we got 10 seconds. Ava Tigner. That's all the contestants. So, great. Thank you, Math Bowl. One of those. All right. Mrs. Kitchen um is
010our science bowl or was our science bowl coach. She's not able to be here this evening. Um but she She a little blurb that she liked us would like us to share along with certificates. This year the Science Bowl team spent time learning about the water cycle and the important role it plays in our environment. Through hands-on activities and discussions, the students explored how water moves through the processes, processes, of evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and collection. Students created miniature versions of the water cycle and observed the changes taking place first hand. This experiment allowed them to see how water continuously moves through Earth's systems in action. Students then completed a team and experiment test together, and four individuals completed a test independently. Where Arthur King impressively scored a near perfect on this on his own individual
011test. It is our pres- pres- pleasure to recognize their hard work this evening. Sorry. My goodness. Arthur King. Ruth Alcaraz. Ava Zigner. Zada Johnson. Nivea Prince. And next we have our art club. So, this is a club that has started last year and we continued on through this school year. Ms. Mercansky was also not able to be here this evening, but she had shared that our club was a creative space for our fourth and fifth graders who love art and want to explore new materials and ideas. They meet every other Tuesday to try and work with hands-on projects like clay, shrinky dinks, printmaking, and painting. Our club encourages creativity, builds confidence, and allows students to share their unique artistic voices with the school community. Great. Ava Tigner Zoe Schuljack Taylor Robinson Sophia Gonzalez Nivea Prince
012I always tell her she's the girl with the prettiest name, Kimberly Gomez. I better not be biased. Kendall Price Carmen Wilson Julissa Collazo Giselle Flores Cervantes Jace Matthews Hayley Scott Cataleya Roman Ava Ellenberger Arthur King Ariel Welch Annalie Chavez Ava Settles Lack the energy. Yes. All right, perfect. Thank you. Those are all of our club students. And last but not least, I want to bring up Mrs. Richardson. She is a Clearly a fan favorite. She is our student council um sponsor. But before she continues on, I want to remind everybody that tomorrow evening at 6:30 and Edison is North American games and Bailey's going for the three-peat. Okay, sorry. Welcome everyone. This is uh officially our second year with a student council. Here we go. Ready? Second year of student council. So this is how
013we're going to do it. If you were in student council this year, please just come stand up here and I want you to stay here. Student council members who received an invitation, please come up and stand up here. Make a nice long line. Right here, Kelly. Kelly, Kelly. We have quite a few members who were not able to make it this evening, but But you notice when you look up here, there are quite a few kids that you have seen called up multiple times. These students are the future leaders. They are our leaders right now. These students are good academic students. They're good leading students. I have had the pleasure to work with them. I work with first graders all day long. I love having a student council meeting with you. You They have great
014ideas. They really do. We have given up Saturdays to come paint the parking lot. Maybe you noticed when you pulled in. That's student council artistic work right there to decorate spots for the teachers. We just came in on a Saturday a couple weeks ago to decorate the the classroom doors for teachers for teacher appreciation week. They stay after school for an hour. They create our spirit weeks. They are leaders in the school. We ask them to do jobs and give them responsibilities that other students don't have because they are leaders. We have volunteered our time for math night to show parents around. We've been the students in the building that will show visitors around where they need to go. They're in charge of announcements. They are great students, but I really want you to look
015at them because they're good academic students and good leaders. If you were part of student council last year, please step forward. So, we had a few and a few more that were not able to make it. These kids have been part of this program for 2 years. They're about to leave our school. I want you to remember use your voice. You are going off into at uh you're going to Edison, right? You will have opportunities there to use your voice, be a leader, share kindness. That's what we're doing. I can't wait to see the amazing things that you guys are going to do. You can step back. Now, also, this year was our first year where we had officers for student council. So, this is Jaylen. She was uh nominated as our secretary. She has
016learned to take notes during our student council meetings, be in charge of all of our paperwork. Thank you, Jaylen, for all your hard work. And then Ruth, this is our president. So, if she could step forward. Ruth has been given the task that she can come to my room in the morning and I will say, "Hey, Ruth. I need you to create a quick little blurb to speak out into the announcements for everybody in about 15 minutes." And she does it. These are leaders. I am so proud of single one of you for the time that you give up, for the leading that you do in the building, and the kindness that you shared with everyone. I hope you continue to do that. Fourth graders, I hope to see you out next year for student
017council. Third graders in the audience, it's your turn next year, so be ready for that meeting. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right. Well, thank you again for letting us showcase all of our students. Um it is it's an honor. Um I'm so excited to see the future of of what all of these kids bring to Bailey. Um so, thank you again for doing that. If I could have one more round of applause for all of the students tonight. All right. Thank you, Mrs. Hayes. We really appreciate that. Thank you all the teachers that they devote their time to providing these clubs for our students. And we really appreciate their time and effort and the commitment that the teachers put into it. But more importantly, we are very proud of each and every one
018of our Bailey students for all of the activities and all of the things that they become a part of here at Bailey Elementary. And as our older students from Bailey go on to Edison, we encourage them to continue to participate in school clubs. They'll have the opportunity to participate in athletics for the first time. So, we really encourage our students to stay active, stay involved, stay strong in your classwork, and also continue to be strong as your school leaders. So, from student council to Girls on the Run, to Math Bowl, Spell Bowl, Science Bowl, all of those things that our students have been a part of, we're very, very proud of them. So, I would appreciate it if you join me in one last round of applause for all of our coaches, teachers, and students.
019All right, moving on with our program this evening, the next thing I'd like to do is turn it back over to Mr. Wright, our president of the school board, for school board member comments. Mr. Wright. Thank you, Dr. Triplett. Uh, we will start down at the end. Mr. Poleska. I just want to thank everybody for attending tonight. It's wonderful to see everybody coming out and supporting the kids. Congratulations to all you students for working hard. It's uh very greatly appreciated, and we're very proud of all of you. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Mr. Music. Yeah, I just want to uh thank all the students for all the hard work they put in. I want to thank the parents for, of course, the rides back and forth from all those things that they're doing.
020Um it couldn't be done without the help from the parents, and uh of course, our teachers that volunteer for all those extra activities. It's just such a wonderful thing, and thank you all so much for being here tonight to celebrate everything the students have done. Thank you, sir. Mr. Tanerio. Okay. Um again, I'd like to thank all the kids for representing us so well. Um that's a lot of clubs we have. And I'm I'm very proud of our school for having so many options for our kids. These clubs are just as important as any sports activities. It teaches them life lessons. And uh I'll throw a special shout out to uh Rue. What's your last name, honey? How many How many awards did you get tonight? How many awards did you get tonight? She lost
02140 lb since she had her baby. She took her shirt or maybe both shirts off. Best she take her sign straight off. She didn't She could finally get down to student council. Thank you for being in so many clubs and representing us. You did a great job. I'm sure you're going to be a massive success. So, uh besides that, I'd just like to thank everybody for coming and uh see you next time. Thank you, sir. Same thing uh you heard three times by the time it gets to me, you're going to hear it a fourth, but great job, kiddos. Uh you guys are the reason I love sitting up on this board. Um watching you guys succeed and and all the events you do uh um just makes me smile constantly. I love seeing you
022guys come up, get your awards. Bailey, you you guys back there, you cheered for your classmates. I loved every second of it. You You guys gave your teammates uh a heck of a round of applause there. So, good job on that. Um >> Preparing for North American Indians. Speaking, since you mentioned that, as a Bailey and alumni, I won't be able to be there tomorrow for the first time ever since being on the board. So, bring it home for us. Leave it here. Sorry. Doctor, you can take it back. Back to you, Doc. All right. Thank you. We really appreciate you coming out this evening and helping us celebrate your children, our students, for the accomplishments and the good things that they do. But, we are also very aware that some may have homework, some
023may have meal time yet to have dinner, and I don't know about you, but my bedtime is coming quickly. So, at this time, those of you that need to leave, feel free to do so. We'll pause our meeting for a moment, but our meeting is very short. It won't take very long to go through the business part of our meeting. You're welcome to stay, but we do understand you have other obligations. So, we'll pause for a couple minutes to let those that need to leave leave this evening. Thank you. Can we all start the show? >> All right, at this time, we will go ahead and reconvene our school board meeting and continue on with the business portion of our meeting. First item for the board to consider is our consent agenda, and items under
024the consent agenda are approval of minutes, financial fiscal information, extracurricular hirings, and donations. And if I can just take a moment to talk about the donations, we have two this evening. One for Bailey Elementary School receiving $179 from Costco Workplace Giving Campaign. So, thank you, Costco, for that generous donation to Bailey Elementary School. We also have nine family activity books on dealing with grief, and those books are donated to Lake Station Community Schools by Dignity Memorial and the National Alliance for Children's Grief. And we really appreciate those books, those donations. Unfortunately, from time to time, our children experience the loss of a parent or grandparent or aunt or uncle, and that is a very difficult time, not only for the parents, but also for the child. So, having these activity books will be very helpful
025in helping our students learn how to deal with grief and get through that grief in appropriate ways. So, we appreciate that donation as well. Mr. President, I present the items that are under the consent agenda and request approval for the consent agenda items this evening. Hearing the recommendation. Mr. President, I'll make a motion to approve. Second. Motion and second. Any discussion? Um yeah, I just want to take a moment to thank Dr. Kriplever and Ms. Pippa uh for accepting those family activity books. Um I'm part of Dignity Memorial uh with Chapel Lawn and Kuiper Funeral Homes and we were looking for ways to try and help uh children understand uh when they're going through such a difficult time what the grief process looks like and how to work through that. So, uh we try to
026donate a few of those books so they they could be at each school should a student need them. Um I know I hope nobody needs them, but um they could be a valuable resource should they, you know, should that arise. So, thank you so much for accepting those. I appreciate that so much that we can continue to try to help think help out in our community in any way we can. Well, thank you, Mr. Music, for making that donation. Anybody else? Hearing none, Mr. Puleski. I. Mr. Music. I. Mr. Tanario. I. And I vote I. Moving on to the next items in under personnel. I recommend to the board this evening that they accept the resignations effective at the end of the school year for the following employees: Kim Hayes, principal at Bailey Elementary School.
027Deanna Gertzema, second grade teacher here at Bailey Elementary School. And Ellen Moss, superintendent secretary. And her resignation date effective on May 26th, 2026. Hearing the recommendation. I'll make a motion to approve. I'll second the motion to approve. Any discussion? I will start out by just saying that I hate to lose all three of them, but having worked closely with Mrs. Hayes and Ellen Moss, I'm thank you for all your hard work. I really hate to see you leave. I know your partner in crime in there next is probably sad to see you leave, too. But thank you for all you've done and thank you for all your hard work. And Ellen, I know she's not here, but she's a really did a great job for us this year. So, thank you for everything. Absolutely. Anybody
028else? I just would agree with Greg and I just wish you luck in the future. I I know that, you know, everyone's done such a wonderful job for us and we appreciate you. All right. Mr. Paleska. I. Mr. Music. >> I. Mr. Tenario. I. And I vote I. The next item on the personnel, I recommend to the board that they approve the termination of Lisa Mishky, food service director, effective as of April 10th, 2026. Hearing the recommendation. I'll make a motion to approve. Second. Any discussion? Hearing none, Mr. Paleska. I. Mr. Music. I. Mr. Tenario. I. And I vote I. Item number three, I would call upon Ms. Pippa to make that recommendation to the board. Thank you, Dr. Kriplever. The next item of personnel, I like to recommend to the board to approve the
029hire Mr. Eric Kurtz for the position of Assistant Superintendent of Operations effective May 18th, 2026. Hearing the recommendation. I'll make a motion to approve. I'll second the motion to approve. Any discussion? Welcome back. Mr. Paleska. I. Mr. Music. I. Mr. Tenario. I. And I vote I. And I believe Mr. Kurtz is in the audience this evening. Congratulations and welcome back to the team. Moving on with the business at hand, we have a facilities request this evening. I would like the board to consider the Civil Air Patrol request to use the community room, gym, and track on Tuesday evenings starting August 18th and concluding on May 25th, 2027. And the times that they will be using our facilities are from 6:30 to approximately 9:30 in the evening. I would recommend the board approve this request. So
030moved. Got you. Second? Does anybody? Second. There it is. Any discussion? Hearing none, Mr. Paleska. >> Aye. Mr. Music. Aye. Mr. Tenario. >> Aye. And I vote aye. Moving on to new business, we have one item this evening and I recommend to the board they approve the renovations to the administration building and also to our bus barn. Hearing the recommendation. I'll make a motion to approve. Second. Any discussion? Mr. Paleska. Aye. Mr. Music. Aye. Mr. Tenario. Aye. And I vote aye. Mr. President, that is all the business at hand that I have to present to the board this evening. Except to remind everyone that our next school board meeting will be held on Tuesday, June 16th at Edison Junior Senior High School in the community room starting at 6:30. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you.
031All right. Any parting comments, Mr. Pueska? Yes, once again, thanks everybody who attended tonight. It's a beautiful evening. I hope everybody gets to go home and enjoy, soak up some sunshine, and have a good night. Thank you, sir. Mr. Music? Yeah, I mean, obviously we're kind of down to our staff that were here. So, I just want to thank you once again for all the hard work you put in for all those clubs and activities. I I couldn't imagine doing all that. I don't think I have the patience or anything like that for it. So, thank you. Um but yeah, thank you to everyone that came out. It's wonderful to see everybody get together like that, and we appreciate it. Thank you, sir. Mr. Tenorio? Yeah, I would just like to thank the staff too.
032Um having that many clubs here, I think it's really important for our school. And a lot of good things are happening here at Lake Station. Um thanks for all the hard work you're putting in. And I know those kids enjoyed the heck out of it. And thank you for putting in all the extra time, man. I know after hours it's you want to go home. You had a long day, but thank you for doing that. I'm glad that we had so many kids represent us. Um that was really nice. There was a lot of kids that that have participated. So, that means that you guys are doing a good job cuz they want to participate. And uh Uh Miss Hayes, really hate to see you leave, but um good luck in your future. You worked
033very hard for us, and I appreciate everything you've done. Um Eric, welcome back, sir. It's good seeing you. Can't wait to work with you again. Um missed you. So. Um shout out to our IT team and the high school principal. >> reading my paper? You're literally going down the line. Thank Thank you for everything you do every week. But everything goes fine. So, thank you. Thank you very much. And uh That's it. I was trying to be good. I kept it short for you. So, I'll wrap it up. Thank Thank you, everybody. Uh thank you, sir. Um teachers, thanks for all your hard work uh during the class day, after the school hours. Uh you guys are never compensated or appreciated more than than or enough to for what you guys actually do. I wish
034we can give you the world. I really do. Um all the clubs and the kiddos, uh good job to them again if you're watching online or if you weren't able to make it. Uh Eric, welcome back. As I told you, same order. IT, thank you. You guys always I like these new mics. They're they work really well, so we're good with that. Kim. Hate to see you go. It's uh you've done well here. I I'm super proud to call you a friend at the end of your mission here and we're always here. Come visit us. Pop into a meeting. I'd love to seeing you guys all sit together through every meeting. You guys showed up at every building. It didn't matter what and Diana's over there as well, so thank you for coming. Um just
035cuz you're leaving doesn't mean you can't keep that bill here for the new principal. >> [laughter] >> Let's make that happen. Going for a three-peat. She's getting evil eye over there. Um Eric, welcome back to the team. Stepped away for a few years. Um come back more knowledgeable. Let's let's move forward to success. That's all I got. Ms. People, do you have anything today? Yes. Uh I'd like to say congratulations to all the students. Thank you to all the staff for the wonderful opportunities that you give to our students. It's such a joy to see all the things that they can participate in and I know that's a lot of time and effort on your part. So, thank you so much. It's it's um the reason why we're here every day is for those children
036and it's it does my heart good to see everything that they have available to them. So, thank you very much. Um and Ms. Hayes, we wish you luck and Mr. Kurtz, welcome back. Thank you. Dr. Cribler. Thank you, Mr. Ryan. I have just a few. First of all, I would like to recognize Edison student who is not here this evening, but she went on, Shay Coffee is her name, and she went on to become the winner of the Young Authors Contest for overall high school student division. So, we have a Young Authors winner in our school district. So, very proud of Shay. She did a great job. I guess I really don't have to remind the parents because our children certainly are looking forward to the 59th annual North American Games tomorrow. So, that'll be
037exciting, and it's always a fun thing to attend even if you're just watching. Those kids just light up their faces, they have big smiles. They work really hard and really want to compete. They're good competitors and really want to win their relay races. So, I'm looking forward to tomorrow evening. Monday, May the 25th, is Memorial Day, so we will not have school that day. We will resume school on Tuesday, May 26th. The last day of school for students is on Wednesday, June 3rd. Last day for our teachers and staff will be on Thursday, June 4th. And finally, graduation for our graduating seniors is on Sunday, June 7th, and that program starts at 2:00 and will be held, weather permitting, on the football field as we have done in the past. So, we look forward to
038that special day for our graduating seniors. And with that, Mr. Wright, those are all my announcements for today. Thank you, sir. Does anybody else have anything? Meeting adjourned. Thank you, everyone.